Crypto · in plain language
Squadmint holds your money on a public network called Solana, in a stablecoin called USDC, always worth one US dollar. Unlike a bank account, you own the keys. That's what this page is about: five ideas worth understanding before you deposit, each one with a picture.
A private key is a long secret number your phone generates when you first open Squadmint. Think of it as the combination to a wall safe that belongs to you, a safe that happens to live out on the Solana network, where everybody can see the safe but nobody can open it without the combination.
When you send USDC, your phone uses the combination to unlock the safe and move some money. When someone sends you money, they drop it into the safe through a slot. Either way, only the person holding the combination can take money out.
Because no central company holds a copy of your combination, no central company can reset it for you. If your phone is destroyed and you never wrote down your seed phrase (more on that in a moment), the money in the safe is still there, visible on the network, belonging to you on paper, but nobody can open the door.
This is the flip side of true ownership. Banks lose the keys for you, in exchange for being able to freeze or reverse what you do. Self-custody trades that convenience for control. Back up your seed phrase, and the risk goes away.
Because the safe is yours, nobody can lock you out of it. Not Squadmint. Not your bank. Not a clerk who had a bad morning. For the people Squadmint was built for, domestic workers sending money home, savings clubs pooling for a funeral, students with no credit history, that's the difference between your money showing up and your money being stuck.
This is about sovereignty, not dodging rules. You're still responsible for following the laws that apply to you, keeping records, and paying what you owe. What changes is that your day-to-day access isn't dependent on anyone else's system being up, unbiased, or willing.
Most coins you've heard of, Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, move up and down in value all the time. That's useful for some things, but terrible if you're just trying to save or send money. You don't want your pocket contribution to be worth 8% less by Friday.
A stablecoin is a coin pinned to a regular currency. One USDC is always worth one US dollar. A company called Circle holds one real US dollar in reserve for every USDC that exists. That's why your Squadmint balance behaves like a familiar number, because under the hood, it is one.
A seed phrase is twelve ordinary English words, ocean, basket, maize…, that your phone shows you once, when you first set up Squadmint. These twelve words can regenerate your private key on any device, anywhere.
Lose your phone? Type the words into Squadmint on a new one and your wallet is back, balance and all. Let someone else see them? They can walk right into your safe. So the whole game is: write them down on paper, put the paper somewhere safe, never type them into a website or photo them.